Semantic and Syntactic Perspective on Mood Selection in Spanish. An Analysis on Presuposition, Government and Binding

Abstract

Farley discusses both semantic and syntactic perspectives on Spanish mood. First, he presents the potential effects of assertion, presupposition, and other similar notions on mood selection in Spanish, synthesizing semantic analyses by Bolinger, Terrell, Hooper, Klein, and Bell Farley then argues that a semantic perspective is insufficient to fully account for the behavior of indicatives and subjunctives, and he presents Spanish mood from a Principles and Parameters perspective on Universal Grammar. Specifically, he addresses the issue of binding domains, the movement ofoperators, and the Empty Category Principle as it relates to the behavior of indicatives and subjunctives in null subject languages.